The researchers scanned and compared the brains of children and adults with and without dyslexia, and found that the two groups had many differences in the connections between different brain regions.

People with dyslexia had less connectivity between a number of brain regions involved in reading, according to the study released in the online journal Biological Psychiatry.

"As far as we know, this is one of the first studies of dyslexia to examine differences in functional connectivity across the whole brain, shedding light on the brain networks that crucially support the complex task of reading," study author Emily Finn, a neuroscience Ph.D. student at Yale University School of Medicine, said in a news release.

"Compared to typical readers, dyslexics had weaker connections between areas that process visual information and areas that control attention, suggesting that individuals with dyslexia are less able to focus on printed words," she explained.

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